


Chromasia

by Qzil



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Color Blind Until You Meet Your Soulmate, Death Row, Execution, F/M, Graphic depiction of death, Heavy Angst, Journalist Anna, Past Violence, Serial Killer Lucifer, electric chair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 19:23:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7002208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qzil/pseuds/Qzil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Journalist Anna Milton is overjoyed when she scores a once in a lifetime opportunity to interview Luc “Lucifer” Angel, the most notorious serial killer of her generation. The moment the two lock eyes, Anna’s world is changed--because now she can see color. The only problem? He’s on death row, and due to be executed in six months.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A huge shout-out to my artist and friend, msdoomandgloom, for her wonderful artwork and endless patience with the truly horrific color palette in this fic.

                                                                                                                                            

The radio blares on in the background as Anna waits at the final stoplight before the turn in for the prison, her heart hammering in her chest from excitement. The light takes far too long to change, the black one at the top staring angrily at her before it fades and the gray-white one on the bottom blinks, signaling her to go. She follows it and switches lanes to take the u-turn for the prison.

There are more trees there, their gray leaves blocking out the sunlight so it shines in white-gray patches on the road. Anna wonders absently if they’re there for the prisoner’s benefit or to keep people away. Probably the latter.

Her phone rings as soon as she pulls into the parking space, making her jump. She turns the radio down and angrily presses the answer button.  

Her brother’s voice floats through the speakers. “Anna? You made it okay?”

“I just pulled into the space, Castiel,” she snaps. “I’m not a child. You don’t have to keep checking up on me.”

“I worry,” he says, and she can practically hear the smile on his face and see a teasing twinkle in his light-gray eyes. At twenty nine, he’s barely a year older than her, but he’s always taken his older brother role more seriously than she thinks is necessary.

But it is thanks to him that she scored this interview, so she supposes that, just this once, she can indulge his worrying.

“Anyway, I’m here, and I’m going to be late if I you keep talking to me,” she tells him. “I’ll call you after I get out, okay?”

“Be careful,” Castiel warns. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

Anna hangs up the call, sighs, and grabs her bag as she exits the car. She will not be allowed to take it into the interview, she knows. She’s gone over the rules a million times, and made sure to bring her recorder. They will not allow pens or pencils in the room, even though her subject will be handcuffed. He’s a dangerous man, after all.

The prison is the exact gray of a tombstone, and looks exactly like one to her. Anna swallows hard as she steps through the doors and waits to be checked in for her interview with the most notorious serial killer of her generation.

“I’m here to interview Luc Angel for Araboth Press,” she tells the man sitting at the front desk. He glances up at her and turns back to the computer to carefully look over her information.

“Congratulations,” he says when he finishes. His skin is a dark gray, his hair a jet black, and his eyes are nearly as dark as his hair. Anna nods and takes the stark-white paper that he offers her. “We didn’t think he’d agree to speak to anyone.”

Anna shrugs. “Just got lucky, I guess.”

In truth, it wasn’t luck. Luc ‘Lucifer’ Angel had outright refused to speak to any member of the press during his seven years in Ennom Penitentiary while he awaited death. Anna had followed the trial of the famed serial killer while she was in college, and had been determined to be the first person to interview him personally. Luckily for her, Castiel’s best friend, Dean, had a brother who worked at the prison, and Lucifer was strangely fond of Sam Winchester. It had taken a little bit of wiggling for her to convince Castiel to pass her request along. Eventually, after a lot of red tape, promises, calling in every favor she had, and enough paperwork to build a small mountain, she had gotten permission to take the two-hour drive to Ennom Penitentiary to interview the man who had been accused of seventeen murders and convicted of thirteen.

Lucifer had implied that there were many more victims, and that the police would never find all of them. Anna didn’t doubt that. It had taken them over ten years to catch him, and if one of his victims hadn’t escaped, they probably never would have. The discovery of a body in his house that he had yet to dispose of had led to the discovery of yet more bodies. Some had been buried in the desert. Some had been fed to his pigs. His murders spanned the country, and never followed any patterns. Prostitutes, hitchhikers, housewives, and high-ranking businessmen had all been treated the same under Lucifer’s knife.

The surviving victim, Tom Masters, had managed to escape Lucifer’s basement of horrors and run for help. A kind neighbor had let him in, and the police had arrived just in time to save the man’s twin, and Lucifer’s girlfriend, a woman named Meg. She’d been missing almost half of her face.

Anna had interviewed the siblings almost two years, when she was still trying to get an interview with Lucifer. Both of them had dark hair and eyes, but Tom’s face was square while Meg’s was round. Despite her many surgeries, Meg had a mass of white, ugly scars marring the light gray skin on the right side of her face, with a long, puckered one standing out on her cheek. When she’d first been saved, Meg had been almost fanatical in her devotion to Lucifer. She’d told the police that he was trying to save her from herself and the world, and she’d voluntarily lain down on his table and allowed him to cut into her.

By the time Anna had interviewed the siblings, Meg had calmed down somewhat, thanks to years of therapy and her father’s care, but she was still clearly fond of Lucifer. Her twin, however, hated Lucifer with a blazing passion, and had told Anna point-blank that he hoped the man burned in Hell for the rest of eternity.

She knows that Lucifer was charming, handsome, and that several of his partners had gone missing once he was finished with them. She’d had a picture of him clipped into the back of her notebook for years in college, and a folder with all the news stories on him. She knows his rounded face, neatly cropped hair, and cold smile as well as she knows her own features.

And she was finally getting to meet him.

Sam meets her outside of the room and bends to give her a hug. He towers over her, looking impressive and imposing in his official black uniform. He’s had to cut his hair for the job, so it no longer brushes his shoulders like it had when he was in college. His eyes are a darker gray than Dean’s, but Anna can see the same mischief in them.

“Anna. Good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too,” she says. “How’s Jess?”

A dark-gray blush creeps over Sam’s face. “Good, good. Pregnant.”

Anna smiles and gives him another hug. “That’s great news! Keep us updated, okay? Castiel will definitely want to come up to see you guys.”

“I will,” Sam promises. He takes a deep breath. “You ready to go in?”

Anna nods. “I’ve only been ready for this interview since I was twenty one years old.”

“Be careful. Don’t let him get off track. I’ll be there the entire time, just in case, but don’t let him talk you into anything. He’s very good at that.”

“Don’t worry. I can do this,” Anna promises. She holds up her recorder and smiles at him.

“Then let’s go in.”

Anna takes another deep breath and slips through the door. She keeps her eyes on her conservative boots, not quite willing to look Lucifer in the eye, not yet. She’s dreamt of this moment for years, and she wants to remember every detail. Her heart pounds in her chest from excitement and she has to concentrate on keeping her smile off her face.

A voice like honey greets her. “Miss Milton.”

Anna straightens her back and looks into his eyes.

The moment she does, her world changes.

She blinks once, twice, and takes a trembling step backward. The prison walls are still a light gray, as are the metal table and chairs and the chains around Lucifer’s wrists. Her boots are still a deep black, her suit pants are still gray, and Lucifer is still wearing prison-regulation gray.

But everything else is different, brighter, and so much _more_ than it was a moment ago.

The man in front of her is changed. His skin isn’t gray, his hair isn’t gray, and his eyes aren’t gray. She has no names for the colors covering his body, no name for the brilliant, beautiful color shining in his eyes.  

She’s met her soulmate, and he is a serial killer sitting on death row.

“Are you okay?” Sam asks her, lightly gripping her elbow to hold her up. She turns her head to glance at him and sees that he is full of color, too. His skin is slightly darker than her own, but still pale, nearly the same shade as Lucifer’s. His hair is a completely different color from Lucifer’s, too. There are different shades under his eyes that she has never noticed before, dark and shadowy, and she has to resist the impulse to run her fingers over them in wonder.

Anna hadn’t known that there could be so many colors.

But she has no time to dwell on it. She’s come here to do a job, after all, and she will do it.  

“I’m fine, Sam,” she lies. She steels her spine and pulls her chair out.

“Miss Milton,” Lucifer greets again. He gives her no indication that he’s just gone through the same transformation she has. “I would pull out your chair for you, but sadly, the circumstances prevent me.” He shakes the chains around his wrists and gives her a small smile.

Absurdly, she laughs.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions,” she begins, resting her recorder on the table. “If you’d speak slowly and clearly, so the recorder will pick it up, I’d be very grateful.”

“They wouldn’t let you have a pen in case I somehow manage to escape my bondage and use it to stab you and Sam?” he asks. “Unlikely. Neither of you have done anything to make me angry.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Anna says. “Now, I’m going to switch the recorder on and begin the interview. I’ve prepared some questions. We’ll bypass anything you don’t want to answer.”

He nods. Anna switches the recorder on and folds her hands in front of her on the table. Before she can ask any questions, Lucifer quickly rattles off a series of numbers.

“I’m not printing that,” she tells him. His smile softens.

“Those are for you. There are people you will need to contact after today. My friend will help with our situation.”

Anna stiffens. She can feel Sam doing the same next to her, but ignores the younger Winchester.

“I’d like to begin the interview now,” she says.

Lucifer waves his hand as far as he can with the cuffs on him. “Ask away, Miss Milton.”

She starts with the customary background questions about his childhood, trying to take note of his body language. But neither his movements nor his eyes betray his thoughts. His voice is clear but monotone, and he speaks directly at the recorder as she had requested.

“Now, all of your victims were seemingly selected at random, with no specific pattern. Can you tell me why that was?”

“They were sinners,” he tells her. “All of them. Every human is a sinner, and they all deserve to die.”

Anna swallows. “But you’re human, too.”

“I’m not, really. I’m better.”

“Is that what you told Meg Masters? She spoke of you as if you were a god to her.”

Lucifer’s eyes actually brighten. “Meg’s a sinner, too, but she’s a good girl, mostly. Does what I tell her to. To answer your question, no, I did not tell Meg I was a god. She seemed to have reached the conclusion all on her own. But it was useful to me for her to think that, so I encouraged it.”

Anna shivers and moves on. She has no way of knowing how much time has passed in the small, windowless room, but it feels like no time at all. Lucifer’s voice is mesmerizing, soft and even, and she wants to keep listening to it forever.

She only snaps out of it when she feels Sam tap her on the shoulder. He raises his dark eyebrows and taps his wrist in a clear signal, even though he wears no watch.  

“It seems as though Sam is telling us that playtime is over,” Lucifer says.

Anna shakes Sam’s hand off of her. “I just have one final question. The date of your execution is a scant six months from now. Do you have any feelings you would like to express about it?”

Lucifer narrows his eyes. “I have no feelings about it. I did what I needed to do for the world. I will be rewarded.”

Anna closes her eyes and sighs heavily. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Angel.”

She switches off the recorder and stands, wincing slightly at the scraping noise the chair makes against the concreate floor. Lucifer closes his eyes. “You should call me Luc or Lucifer, Miss Milton. I have a feeling we’re going to get to know each other very well.”

Sam takes hold of her arm, gripping it hard enough to hurt. “Enough, Angel. Leave it.”

Lucifer opens his eyes and gives Sam a warm smile. “But, Sam, she’s my soulmate.”

Anna drops her eyes to the floor. She flinches when Sam’s fingers dig into her arm. He shoots Lucifer an angry look and begins to drag her from the room. She goes with him until some strange impulse takes hold of her and she struggles from Sam’s grip. She turns and looks into Lucifer’s eyes, wanting to memorize the color so she can find the name of it later.

“Anna,” she blurts. “My first name is Anna. You can use it, if you want.”

Sam tugs her from the room before Lucifer can say anything else. “What the Hell, Anna?” he barks as he marches her down the hallway. “You can’t come here again, and don’t you dare publish anything about how he’s your soulmate. He can’t be. He’s just fucking with you. He’s a monster.”

Sam pulls her into a room that has windows. There are bars over them, and the glass is thick, but she can see the sky.

It’s the same color as Lucifer’s eyes.

“How could you possibly be soulmates?” Sam continues. “Honestly, Anna!”

“His eyes are sky-colored,” she tells Sam hurriedly. “I don’t know the name of the color, but they’re the same, almost. His are a little darker, though, a different shade. But they’re the same.”

She feels herself smile involuntarily. Sam’s grip on her arm slackens.

“You can see color,” he breathes. Anna’s eyebrows wrinkle.

“Can’t you?”

He shakes his head. “I love Jess, but…no, I can’t.”

Anna swallows hard. “Is there anywhere around here that you can buy a color set? I want to know all of them. I want to learn all their names.”

“The department store in town always has a small stock,” Sam suggests. “He’s just not a good person, Anna. He can’t be your soulmate. You can’t be with him.”

“I don’t even know him,” Anna points out. “But this is amazing. The sky is just…it’s so pretty, Sam. And the grass. And the leaves. Even the tree trunks. It’s beautiful. I can’t wait to see all of them.”

“He dies in six months,” Sam reminds her. His voice is gentle.  

Anna closes her eyes and bites her lip. “I know.”

.

The world outside of the prison is amazing.

She hadn’t known that the world could hold so many colors, so many different shades. She floats on a high of happiness as she walks, turning in circles to absorb everything, all of the colors that she doesn’t yet have names for flying past her vision in one multicolored blur. There are so many different shades around her, more of them than she ever thought possible, all of them blending into one another and on top of each other, all of them mixing together to create an infinite amount of beauty.

She slips inside her car and pulls her sun visor down. She examines herself in the small mirror, running her fingers over her own pale skin. She takes down the tight bun she’d put her hair up into that morning and turns her head to catch the different shades of color playing through her hair. It’s different from both Lucifer’s and Sam’s, some in-between color that she has no name for. The sun begins to set behind her, sending rays of color spreading across the sky.

She takes another look at herself in the mirror and touches her hair.

“Sunset,” she says out loud. The sunset is too many different hues to really match her hair, but it is close enough, the closest she can come to naming her own hair color, so she takes it.  

She sits in her car until night falls and shadows creep across the ground. But, even then, her world is not black and white. The night sky is darker than the daytime, but not completely black. She marvels in the different colors for a while longer before she can bring herself to drive away, disappointed when the stoplight is still black, medium gray, and light gray.

.

Anna texts Castiel instead of calling him when she pulls into the parking lot of the department store. The building is gray, like everything in her world, but inside is bright and cheerful. The people are a multitude of colors, and Anna finds herself sagging against the door, dizzy at the onslaught. A kind saleslady asks if she needs anything.

“A color set,” Anna stammers. The saleslady’s smile becomes genuine. Her eyes, the same color as Sam’s hair, are wide with shock.

“That is so exciting!” she squeals. “Congratulations! We should have a few right over here. Oh, it’s always an exciting day when this happens!”

The color set is the best thirty dollars Anna has ever spent. On impulse, she goes to the small section they have of colored clothing and buys a brightly-colored jacket the color of the leaves outside the prison.

The label says that it is a color called _green._

.

She resists opening the color set until she settles on the guest bed at Castiel’s house. Her brother’s text says he’s working late, and Anna is grateful for the privacy.

She knows that she should be doing this with Lucifer. In all the books she’s read, and in all the articles online, soulmates learn colors together, the two of them looking at the stiff swatches and naming the hues that light up their world. But she is alone. For a moment, she feels a pang of pity for Lucifer. There will be no one to teach him the names of the colors he can see, and he will probably never see most of them, anyway. His world will remain swaddled in shades of gray.

She rips away the packaging with trembling hands and gently pulls the lid from the box. There are several packages of cards, and a thick book that no doubt holds the names of more colors. Anna reaches for the top package and lightly tears away the cellophane. The top card is a pure white, and the black ink reads _Basic Colors_ in thick, blocky letters.

But she is sick of whites and blacks and grays.

She moves aside the top card, tosses it back into the package, and spreads the thin cards out on the bed. There are colors for her hair, the trees, the sky, and other things she has yet to see. Anna traces her fingers over the cards and flips them over one by one to learn their names.

Red. Green. Blue. Orange. Yellow. Purple. Pink.

She sits there for a long time, turning the cards over and over to memorize the names and piece together the things she’s seen. Her hair is red, but not quite the bright red of the card. It’s darker, a different shade that she does not yet know the name of, but it is close enough. The sunset is red. Her lips are pink. Her eyes are a color she has yet to name, a mix of blues and greens.

She picks up the card for blue again and studies it. The first color she ever saw, the color she will remember seeing for the rest of her life. Lucifer’s eyes.

She knows the name now, but she also knows that she will forever associate it with Lucifer.

.

Castiel arrives home as she opens the book and begins to read about how, if you mix colors together, you’ll get even more. Her hands itch to run to the store and buy some paint, to try it for herself, but everything is closed. She’s learned since that her skin is a hue called _peach,_ and wonders if that means she looks like the fruit.

Castiel’s eyes are blue, like the sky, like Lucifer’s. His hair, which has always been black to her, is now lighter. It is still dark, but not the pure, inky black that she has known since childhood. Instead, she would place it somewhere in the browns. His skin is peachy, too, but slightly darker than hers. Less pale, more sun-kissed.

“How did it go?” he asks, stepping into her room after a token knock. “Anna, is that a color set?”

“Your eyes are _blue,”_ she tells him. The word is still entirely new to her, and sounds funny coming from her mouth.

Her brother’s face breaks out in a large smile. “Anna, that’s wonderful! Was it a guard at the prison? What’s their name? Are they coming over after they get off of work? Do I get to meet them?”

Anna drops her gaze back to the cards. “It was _him.”_

“Him?”

“Lucifer,” she says quietly. “Luc Angel. He’s my soulmate.”

Anna feels the bed dip as Castiel sits down next to her. His hand comes to rest gently on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Anna.”

She sighs and picks up the blue card again. “Me, too.”

.

She tries to write her article, but the more she listens to Lucifer’s voice, the more she thinks about his eyes. Eventually, she gives up and drags a chair over to the window to watch the sunset.

Her editor will be mad, she knows. But then, the man hasn’t met his soulmate yet, and doesn’t know the joy of watching colors spread across the sky, trying to name them before they vanish into the still, blue night.

Her cat, Muffin, jumps into her lap and begins to purr. Anna pets the cat’s light fur and reaches for the color set she keeps open on the side table. She’s not yet figured out the color of Muffin’s fur, only that it reminds her of Lucifer’s hair. She thought yellow at first, but Muffin’s fur is too light to be truly called yellow, although that is the closest she can guess.

She shuffles through the cards until she lands on a light, yellowish color that identifies itself at _sand._

She strokes her cat’s sandy fur and watches the sunset.

.

Anna’s boss is extremely pleased with the interview, even though she makes her deadline by the skin of her teeth. It’s a once in a lifetime piece, after all, and the fact that she managed to nab it practically makes her a celebrity around the office. Anna takes the various congratulations with fake smiles and retires to her cubicle.

It amazes her how so many things are still black and white in her world. Since only a very small percentage of people can see color, no one bothers to put it into anything. All of the pictures in her cubicle are still varying shades of gray, as are the pictures on the Internet and the images on the television.

Anna tapes her article to her cubicle wall, putting it between a picture of Castiel and a picture of Muffin. Lucifer’s face stares back at her, his slate-gray eyes cold and his mouth quirked in a cruel smile. She looks at it for a few moments before she turns to her computer and uses company time to search for a site selling colored pens. They’re hard to find, and ridiculously pricy, but she knows they’re worth every penny.

Later, after work, she stops a woman wearing a garish purple dress decorated with orange and green flowers to ask her where she found a shop that sells colored clothing. The woman smiles and gives her directions, and soon Anna finds herself in a world of color. The rugs are a rich, deep purple and the walls are an eye-searing neon green, bright enough to give Anna a headache.

The couple that run the shop tell her that they’ve been together for sixty years, and congratulate her on finding her soulmate. Anna only nods and begins to browse through the racks, picking up anything that catches her eye. She buys stockings in greens and yellows and purples, finds skirts and blouses and dresses in oranges and pinks and blues, and piles her cart high with color, taking anything that fits her. When she’s finished, she asks to wear and outfit out of the store. The owners happily throw her gray slacks and blouse and jacket into a bag for her.

She exists the store wearing a royal blue skirt, a neon pink sweater, and bright yellow tights. On the way home, she stops at a trashcan and dumps her old clothes into it. No one at work has met their soulmate yet, so to them, she will look like she’s wearing shades of gray, anyway. Her colors will be her own little secret.

When she arrives home, Anna ignores the TV. Everything is in black and white, anyway, and she wants to spend as much time in a color-filled world as possible. She spreads her new clothes out on her bed and takes her time sorting them into her closet and bundling up her old, drab clothing to take to the donation drop in the morning.

After, she sits in her usual chair to watch the sunset. The blues of the sky once again turn her thoughts toward Lucifer’s eyes, and once the oranges and pinks and purples have faded, she finds herself at her desk, a pen in hand and her good stationary in front of her.

Anna hesitates. He’s still a serial killer, despite the fact that the universe has decided that he’s the person she’s supposed to be with for the rest of her life, and she knows that letters and communication can only lead to trouble. He’s scheduled to die in six months, after all.

She writes him, anyway.

 _Your eyes are the color of the sky,_ she writes, _and your hair is the same color as my cat._

She signs her name in tiny, cramped handwriting, and sends the letter off before she can change her mind.

.

Several days later, her new pens arrive in the mail. Anna spends an hour writing words in different colors. The next day, her colored pens and markers show up, and Anna sets about decorating the walls of her apartment. She’s always been handy with a pen, but she wants perfection, so with the help of stencils she turns her home into a kaleidoscope of color. She has a vine of golden leaves creeping across the baseboards and draws flowers in purples and blues and yellows all down her walls. She decorates her bathroom in varying shades of calming pink squiggles and paints random green stripes on the walls in her bedroom and wonders if real colored paint would be worth the expense. She tries to forget about her letter to Lucifer.

Until she gets one back.

She sets the envelope on her dark-gray plastic table and stares at it for a long time. Muffin jumps up and bats at the creamy white paper, amber eyes shining, until Anna finally shoos her cat away and opens the envelope with trembling hands.

_Dear Miss Milton,_

_Thank you for writing me. I would complement you on your article, but unfortunately, I have not been able to read it. However, I am sure that a smart young lady like yourself wrote something splendid, especially since I was the subject. If you are feeling generous, I ask you to include a copy of it in your next letter, should you wish to send one._

_Sadly, I have not been able to confirm the information in your letter. I know my hair is lightly colored, but other than that, I have no idea what the colors are that I now see every day, as there is no way to access a color set where I am, and the guards refuse to tell me anything. Although, since none of them have met their soulmate, asking them is about as useful as talking to the walls._

_And although I do not have a name for the colors I glimpse through the windows or see during the short time I am allowed out of my cell, I can tell you this: While my hair is apparently the same color as your cat’s fur, your hair, as I remember it, is the color of the sunset. I think of it each night._

_I have added your name to my visitor’s list, in case there is more information about me that you wish to know. We could speak through letters, of course, but it is better to do these things in person, especially if it is on your own time, and not just a job assignment._

_\--Lucifer._

_P.S. Should you choose to visit, I ask that you please wear something with some color in it. All of this gray is starting to become more boring than it was before._

Anna swallows hard and drops the letter onto her table. She wonders how much of it is true and how much of it is his famous silver tongue talking, trying to draw her in. She knows that it’s a bad idea to see him again, knows that she should push Luc Angel out of her mind and focus on the world around her for the next six months. She has enough sick days and personal days saved up for a few weeks’ worth of travel time, and enough savings to get her out of the country for a while.

She knows that she should do it, should take off and go and see the glorious green of the Amazon or the sandy expanse of the Egyptian desert or even the famous redwood forest in California while she can still appreciate the colors. But Lucifer is her universe-designated soulmate, and a small part of her feels pity for him when she learns that he does not know the names of the colors he can now see, and that he is trapped in a box of gray.

Anna grabs her good stationary and lines her colored pens up on her desk. Her letter is short, and contains nothing personal. She simply uses the correct pen to write the name of each color, and a small list of things that correspond to each color. At the bottom, she takes her markers and colors in small spot and writes the names in small, cramped handwriting.

She signs it, seals it up, and searches up the prison’s phone number to figure out visitation.

.

She wears a burnt orange shirt covered in bright pink roses, deep green slacks, and neon purple boots. She makes the long drive in silence, staring out the window every time she comes to a stoplight to look at the leaves. When she pulls into the prison Anna takes a deep breath that does nothing to calm her pounding heart and trembling hands.

Sam looks surprised to see her, and shoots her a sour look. Anna simply shrugs and signs in, lets herself be checked over, and sits in the small waiting room until the appropriate time.

When she finally sees Lucifer, her heart skips a beat and butterflies flare to life in her stomach. She feels a deep, instinctive pull to be near him, to break through the sheet of Plexiglas separating their bodies to throw herself into his arms and hold him close. She shakes it off and settles herself in the chair across from him.

His crystal blue eyes flash with something for a moment, an emotion that Anna can’t quite read, but the rest of his face remains impassive. His eyes drink every inch of her in, and Anna obligingly stands and turns so he can see all the colors of her outfit before she takes her seat again. His slate-gray uniform matches the drab walls of the prison and the chair he sits on. 

Lucifer motions to the phone mounted on the wall. Anna swallows hard and holds the dark-gray plastic to her ear. “Hello.”

His pinkish lips twitch briefly, as if to smile. “Hello, Miss Milton. I see you honored my request. I don’t believe I’ve seen some of those shades yet.”

“They call it _neon_ when it’s really bright,” Anna explains. “I don’t know why.”

Lucifer nods. “Ah, yes. Tell me about shades of color. I understand that it’s difficult to get ahold of paints and markers and things in different shades, not to mention expensive.”

Anna explains the different colors in her outfit, and tries to explain different shades as well. But it is hard to find the words, when she is just learning them herself.

What she says next surprises her. “Would they let me send you a color set?”

Lucifer frowns. “Possibly. I cannot guarantee they would let me keep it, however.”

“I’ll try,” Anna promises. He may be a serial killer, and he may be marked for death, but he should have that, at least. It is a sad thing, to be able to see color and yet be trapped in a box of gray, unable to put names on the new things around him.

He gives her an actual smile. “Thank you, Miss Milton.”

“Anna,” she says. “You can call me Anna, if you want.”

“I would like you to continue to call me Lucifer. I dropped the name Luc long ago,” he requests. “I believe our time is almost up, and I have another visitor coming.”

Anna blinks in surprise. “You have a regular visitor?”

“Meg comes to see me once a month, to update me on the outside world. She fills me in on other murders in the outside world, and of the public’s perception of me. She’ll usually profess her undying devotion, although it is quite sarcastic, and then we’ll talk about the Bible for a bit before she goes home. I was very glad to see that her face has mostly healed,” Lucifer explains. “I’m glad she’s happy now, but I would have liked her to have been my last, if I had to be caught, instead of that teacher in Oregon. Meg is a devoted soul.”

Anna shudders at the mention of Lucifer’s last kill. “I interviewed Meg a long time ago. I didn’t know she still visits you.”

Lucifer nods. “Oh, yes. I believe she and I are going to begin discussing my funeral soon.”

Anna’s eyes go wide, and she swallows hard. “I forgot, for a minute.”

“Lucky you,” Lucifer says. His voice is dry and cool. “Did you ever contact the number I gave you?”

Anna shakes her head. “To be honest, I forgot about it. What with…everything.”

“Call it,” Lucifer suggests.

Sam comes up behind Anna and gently taps her on the shoulder. “Time’s up, Anna. There’s another visitor waiting in the hall.”

“It seems our time is up for today, Anna,” Lucifer says. Sam glares at him, but Lucifer merely gives the guard a small smile. “I will see you again soon. Look for my next letter.”

“Goodbye,” Anna says. She goes to hang up the phone, but stops when Lucifer speaks again.

“I had a cat, too.”

Anna freezes. “I didn’t know that.”

“His name was Claudandus,” he tells her. “Meg has him now. If you can get in touch with her, I’d like to know what color he is.”

“I’ll try,” Anna promises. Sam gives her another tap on the shoulder, and she hangs up the phone. She can feel Lucifer’s sky-blue eyes boring into her back as she leaves, but does not look over her shoulder at him.

“This is a bad idea,” Sam says as he escorts her out. “You shouldn’t have come back.”

Anna crosses her arms over her chest. “I just wanted to talk to him. I had to know. He’s my _soulmate,_ Sam.”

Sam flinches. “That doesn’t mean anything. Science has never proven that the whole colorvision thing is because of soulmates. As far as they know, it’s a random thing, or a quirk of genetics.”

Anna purses her lips. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. It happens because it’s meant to happen. It sucks that mine is a serial killer, but that’s what it is. Is it so wrong that I want to get to know him a little bit? To find out why God thinks we’re compatible?”

“You can’t really think that God has anything to do with this!”

“I really think he does,” Anna says. “Everything happens for a reason.” She walks through the door and ignores Sam, freezing when she sees a familiar face sitting on one of the chairs.

Meg Masters looks almost the same as she did when Anna interviewed her two years ago. Her skin is pale, her makeup is immaculate, and her lips are quirked upward in a small smirk. The ugly, rippled scar on one side of her pale face is a little less noticeable, and the other small ones near her forehead and jawline are barely visible at all. The only change is her hair, which now falls to her shoulders instead of nearly to her waist.

Like everyone who cannot see color, Meg is dressed in varying shades of gray and white and black. She holds a small Bible in one hand, and a notepad and miniature pencil in the other.

“Anna Milton,” Meg purrs and stands to embrace Anna, and Anna finds that she can do nothing but hug her back. It is thankfully short. “You’ve been to see our father. He’d hoped that you would, you know. I hope you left him in a good mood.”

“He seemed pleased,” Anna says evenly, backing out of the hug. But Meg doesn’t let her go, taking Anna’s hands in hers instead. “You called him your father?”

Meg nods. “Me and a few others. Fans of his, you know. Those girls who seem to love death row serial killers. Good for helping to pay for the funeral, though. Balthazar should be doing it, but he’s refusing. Says he put out too much already.”

“I wasn’t aware that he had fans.”

Meg nods again. “Oh, yeah. They’re all over the Internet, but I’ve only met a few of them, the ones he writes to. They think they’re special because he talks to them.” Meg rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “And I may as well be some sort of holy woman since he used to fuck me and he nearly cut my face off. There’s one born every minute, as they say.”

Meg gives Anna a toothy grin, showing off pearly white teeth and stretching the puckered scar on her face. Anna nervously grins back.

“How’s your brother?” Anna asks, more to be polite than anything else. Meg shrugs.

“He got married and moved to Germany,” Meg informs her. “I talk to him now and then online, but he’s not too happy that I still see Lucifer. His wife doesn’t speak any English, and I don’t know any German, so I don’t know much about her.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“For him, maybe. It was nice to see you, Anna, but I better go in. We’re starting funeral planning today.” Meg shakes Anna’s hand and gathers up her things to walk into the room, and almost reaches the door before Anna remembers Lucifer’s request.

“Meg, wait!” Anna calls. Meg turns around, eyebrows raised. “Lucifer asked me to ask you about his cat.”

Meg tilts her head. “Claudandus? He’s fine. The vet says that he’s still a little overweight, but he’s good aside from that.”

“No, Lucifer wants to know what color he is,” Anna says slowly. Meg’s eyes go wide and she drops her things onto the linoleum floor. Anna watches Meg’s dull-gray pencil roll under a chair, refusing to meet her girl’s eyes.

Meg grabs Anna’s hands again and forces her to look up. “He can see colors now? Because of you?”

“Yes,” Anna whispers.

Meg’s dark brown eyes dance with happiness as a wide smile stretches across her face. “Oh, this is great news. Just give me a second and I’ll write down my address and phone number. As soon as I can find where my fucking pencil went.”

Anna reaches into her bag and hands Meg one of her old black pens. Meg thanks her and hurriedly scribbles down her address and phone number on her pad before she rips the page out and presses it into Anna’s hands.

“Call me soon,” Meg tells her when she’s finished. “We’ll set up a time for you to come and take a look at Claudandus. And the girls would love to meet you.”

“I haven’t really told anybody about it,” Anna says. She tucks the paper into her bag, anyway.

“I can keep a secret,” Meg assures her. Anna swallows, because she knows Meg can. The police had long suspected her of knowing more than she let on about Lucifer’s murders, or having some involvement in them, but had been unable to prove anything. “Anyway, call me.”

“I will,” Anna promises. Meg gives her a nod, gathers up her things, and lets Sam escort her to see Lucifer.

Anna doesn’t bother to ask who Balthazar is. She figures that she’ll find out soon enough.

.

When she gets home, Anna goes through her transcript of her interview with Lucifer and stares at the series of numbers he had given her. She hesitates for a few minutes before she takes a deep breath and dials the numbers.

The phone rings four times before she hears a click and a heavily-accented voice speaks into the phone. “Meg, darling, how many times have I told you not to call this late? You must take the time difference into account.”

“I’m not Meg,” Anna says quietly into the phone. “My name is Anna. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“Sweetheart, I think you have the wrong number,” the man says.

Anna takes another deep breath. “Luc Angel gave this number to me.”

She hears the man on the phone suck in a breath. “Lucifer asked you to contact me?”

“He says that you can help with our situation. Meg mentioned you when I talked to her earlier today. She said you name was Balthazar?”

“What situation exactly are you in?” Balthazar asks slowly. “If it’s anything illegal, I already told him that I can’t offer any more help.”

“His eyes are blue,” Anna blurts.

She hears Balthazar sigh heavily. “Oh, shit.”

“Yes,” Anna agrees. Balthazar groans.

“I’m in London at the moment, managing some things, but I’ll be back next week,” Balthazar says quickly. “I have to talk to Meg, but I’ll contact you right after.”

“Who are you?” Anna asks him. “Why did Lucifer have me contact you?”

“It’s best not to talk about these things over the phone,” Balthazar says. “Luc and I are friends. We went to college together. I’m the one who paid all his lawyer fees and paid for Meg’s surgeries.”

“The papers never said anything about you.”

“And they won’t,” Balthazar says, a growl in his voice. “Keep your chin up, darling. The next couple of months aren’t going to be easy.”

He hangs up without saying goodbye. Anna stares down at the phone for a long while, after, wondering just what she’s gotten herself into, and wondering if Sam was right and she should’ve let the whole thing go.

.

Two days later, she gets another letter from Lucifer.

_Anna,_

_Meg seems to think that you should be involved in the funeral planning, and she also tells me that you didn’t seem to know who our friend was. If you haven’t already, please call him. You will need him in the coming weeks. The name he goes by to us is not his real name, of course, no more than Lucifer is mine, but I have promised not to reveal his true name to anyone._

_Meg also tells me that she has given you her phone number and address. I ask that you call her as well. She is an odd girl, but I guarantee that she holds no grudge against you for being my supposed ‘soulmate’. If anything, you seem to fascinate her._

_I will see you at the end of the week, I’m sure. Until then, feel free to write._

_\--Luc “Lucifer” Angel._

Anna reads the letter twice, tucks it away in the drawer that holds his last letter, and calls Meg. The girl picks up on the first ring.

“Meg Masters,” she says briskly.

“Um, hi, Meg. It’s Anna.”

Anna can practically hear Meg’s smile through the phone when the girl speaks. “Anna, hey! Did you get Lucifer’s letter?”

“Yes. And I called Balthazar. We didn’t speak for long, though.”

“It’s good you contacted him, anyway. _Claudandus, get down from there! The fish is not for you to eat!_ But he’s in London right now, anyway, and doesn’t really trust phones. He prefers speaking in person when it’s about Lucifer or anything related to it,” Meg tells her. “Anyway, when did you wanna drive up? Or I could bring Claudandus down to you, if you wanted.”

“I’ve got work all week,” Anna says apologetically. “I could come up Friday after work, though.”

“Sounds like a plan. Balthazar should be back from London by Sunday. The three of us should get together and figure shit out. Lucifer and I started funeral planning, by the way. Did you want to be part of that?”

“Part of planning his funeral?”

“Well, you’re his soulmate and everything,” Meg points out. “So you should, you know, have a say. Balthazar and I are going to look at plots next week. Did you want to come and pick one out, maybe get your own if you’re planning on being buried next to him?”

Anna blinks rapidly. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Well, that’s something to start thinking about. We’re almost down to five months,” Meg says. _“Claudandus I swear to God get the fuck out of the fishbowl!_ Look, I’ve gotta go take care of this damn cat and get to work myself. Call me on Friday if you need directions. If not, call me before you get here, in case I fall asleep.”

“I will,” Anna promises.

.

It feels like time is passing at a snail’s pace as Anna waits for Friday afternoon. She receives two more letters from Lucifer, each one filled with mundane details of his life in prison.  _I saw a bird in the yard today. It was blue, so blue that it blended in with the sky. I’m not sure what it’s called. Lunch today was bologna sandwiches. My mother used to pack them in my lunch in elementary school. I finished reading a rather silly book today about a giant shark._

Anna writes back, careful not to include any personal details, and uses a different colored ink each time. _I think it’s called a blue jay. Or it could just be a bluebird. I had Chinese for dinner tonight because I couldn’t be bothered to cook. I saw purple flowers today when I went to the gardening section of Wal-Mart. The label said that they were pansies. I didn’t know that they could be that color. The shark book sounds funny. What’s it called?_

At work, she stares at the clock each day, eager to go home and check her mailbox for another letter. She tries to focus on her assignments and fails, but for once her boss lets her off the hook. Anyone would be shaken up after facing down one of the most notorious serial killers of their age, he says.

When Friday afternoon finally rolls around, Anna rushes from the office and plugs Meg’s address into her car’s GPS. What should be an hour’s drive turns into nearly an hour and a half thanks to traffic and a McDonald’s stop. She’s still downing her fries when she pulls up to Meg’s small house situated at the end of a long country road. There’s nothing else for miles around, the land green and flat and beautiful, and Anna envies the solitude and color of the place, so different from the sprawling, gray cityscape she lives in.

Meg waves from the white and brown front porch. The paint peels in places, revealing the wood’s natural color that Anna knows Meg can’t see, and one of the steps leading up to the house is broken. Meg rises from her chair to greet Anna, a beaming smile on her face.

“It’s beautiful here,” Anna says. The white paint is peeling off of Meg’s house as well, and Anna notices that one of the front windows is missing a coal-black shutter, but she looks pointedly away.

“It didn’t look so nice surrounded by assholes with cameras,” Meg tells her. “Thankfully, they’ve mostly fucked off. They’ll probably be back when it gets closer to the date, though. Trust me when I say to never Google yourself. Bunch of assholes on the Internet talking about how they could’ve done better than you. I still get weird mail now and again from people who’ve managed to use the Internet to find my house.”

“People talk about you?” Anna asks. Meg nods.

“I was a stupid kid when I got involved with Luc,” Meg explains. “Barely eighteen, thought I was hot shit, you know? Subscribed completely to his fucked-up philosophy that I’m not even sure he believes in himself.”

“He wanted to cleanse the world of sinners,” Anna says softly.

“And we’re all sinners, so we should all die.” Meg’s face stretches into a beaming smile, and she widens her eyes so she looks insanely happy. “Only through the sacrifice of pain can you cleanse your sin! Give your blood to the Earth and rest eternally in the bosom of the Lord!”

Anna snorts before she can stop herself, and Meg lets out a giggle.

“He really said that?” Anna asks.

“He really did,” Meg confirms. “Anyway, come on inside.”

Anna follows Meg into the small house, closing the door softly behind her. The furnishings are sparse, and like everything else in a world where most people cannot see color, they are plain shades of gray. From what Anna knows of the girl, she had expected different decorations, maybe a more gothic look to the house, but it looks more like a beach bungalow than a small house in the country. There’s a painting of seagulls on the wall above the fireplace, and another one showing a beach hanging over the TV. The furniture, what little of it there is, looks fragile and replaceable, chairs made of whicker, the couch thin and worn, and the low coffee table clearly an IKEA model. The small lamp resting on a table is covered in seashells.

“It’s not my stuff,” Meg explains. “I only moved up here when it got closer to the execution date. The house belongs to Balt.”

“Who is he?” Anna asks, sitting when Meg motions her toward the couch. Meg takes a chair and shrugs.

“He and Lucifer were childhood friends, as far as I can tell, as close as brothers. Balt comes from a rich family, and he’s made a lot of money for himself. So, so much money. I don’t know if Balt’s ever killed anyone, but I think he has. He and Lucifer were like _that.”_ Meg holds up two fingers twined together. “When all that shit went down with the murders, Balt’s the one who hired the lawyers and paid them. They fought like Hell to get him outta the death penalty, but he just killed too many people.”

“That they know about,” Anna corrects.

Meg nods. “Right. That they know about. He also helped me out after the whole thing. Paid for my surgeries to get my face fixed up, gave me a bit to live on until I found another job, put me up in this house when the date got closer so I could see Lucifer more often.”

“That seems like an awful lot to do for someone just based on a childhood friendship,” Anna comments. Meg shrugs.

“I don’t know everything about what happened between them. All I know is that they were close, very close, and Lucifer did Balt some favors, so he’s returning them,” Meg explains. “Where’s that damn cat? Claudandus! Here boy! Claudandus!”

Anna hears a meow and turns to see a truly enormous ginger and white cat pad into the room and throw itself at Meg. Meg catches the cat easily, turns it onto its back, and cradles it like one would a baby, cooing at it all the while. The cat flails its enormous feet for a moment, pushing her face away so it cannot be kissed, and then gives up, lying limp while Meg lays several kisses on its nose and head.

“This is Claudandus,” Meg coos. “He’s such a baby. He’s my baby boy.”

“That cat is _enormous,”_ Anna breathes.

“He’s a breed called a Maine coon,” Meg explains, reaching down to tickle one of the cat’s paws. Claudandus tries to bat her hand away and fails. His bushy tail lashes from side to side. “But he’s a sweet boy.”

Anna stands and reaches down to pet the cat, running her fingers through his long, soft fur. Compared to a few of the dogs she and Cas had as a kid, he’s tiny, but compared to her own cat, Muffin, he may as well be a giant.

“My little baby,” Meg continues. “My sweet little man eater who won’t stay out of my fishbowl.”

Anna stiffens and backs away. “Man eater?”

Meg shushes her. “The authorities don’t know that, or they would’ve taken him like they took the pigs.”

Anna swallows hard. Claudandus begins to purr, and fixes his amber eyes on Anna, tongue swirling around his lips.

“Well,” Anna says after a few moments of silence. “At least I can tell Lucifer what color he is now.”

“What color is he?” Meg asks curiously.

“Ginger,” Anna answers. “That’s a sort of red, kind of. But much lighter. And he’s white, too, under his belly.”

Meg nods, as if she knows what Anna is talking about. “Well, he looks white and gray to me, like always. Did you wanna stay here tonight? I’ve got a guest bedroom.”

“I think I’ll drive over to my brother’s place and then go see Luc in the morning,” Anna says evenly. “Balthazar said that he wanted to talk to both of us together, though.”

“Oh, we can do lunch!” Meg says happily. “Balthazar always pays, and he loves that fancy crap. C’mon, I’ll walk you out.”

Meg stands and casually dumps Claudandus on the couch. The cat stares at both of them for a long moment before it jumps down, pads over to Anna, and rubs against her leg, demanding to be petted again.

“He likes you!” Meg says.

Anna shudders and gathers her car keys.

.

“Ginger and white,” Anna tells Lucifer as soon as she picks the phone up. “Ginger’s a sort of red, but much lighter. I’ll see if I can find a marker to match it so I can show you in my next letter. I saw a web site for making your own paints out of plants and things. I may try that, if I can’t find it in a store.”

Lucifer nods. “Very well. Tell me what colors you wear today?”

Anna smiles and obligingly explains her outfit, today a royal purple blouse, emerald skirt, and mustard-yellow tights. Her boots are a shocking, ruby red, near the color of blood. Lucifer’s eyes light up when she tells him that.

“I wish I had known you before I started killing,” he muses. Anna feels her heart beat faster at the words, a blush rising on her cheeks. Absurdly, she thinks some sort of romantic confession is about to come, some little-girl part of her that grew up listening to tales of true love rising to the surface. Instead, Lucifer stares dreamily into the distance and says, “I would so like to know what color the human body is inside, would have liked to see the blood fresh and red.”

That little-girl part of Anna deflates. “I could find it, maybe, if I look hard enough on the Internet. There must be doctors or other killers that can see color.”

Lucifer shakes his head. “I read about it, once. There was this serial killer in the thirties who kept a journal of his kills, and someone posted most of the passages online. He described intestines as a gray-purple, and most of the organs as pinkish. Of course, to most people blood is simply a dark gray, but there are still medical students who study his descriptions. Tell me, have you set up a time to meet with Balthazar?”

Anna nods. Meg had called her that morning to tell her that Balthazar was back, and would take them to dinner after their visits with Lucifer. “We’re going to dinner tonight, to talk.”

“He’ll help you with whatever you need,” Lucifer promises. “If the press somehow finds out about us, he’ll keep you safe.”

“Yet he won’t pay for your funeral.”

Lucifer shrugs. “Funerals are expensive. Besides, he needs to stay away. He hasn’t even been to see me since I was locked up, or called, or written. I suspect that I will not see him again. But he will do right by us.”

Anna’s heart begins to flutter in her chest again. “Us?”

“Me, you, Meg, and even Tom,” Lucifer says softly. “He owes me.”

Anna does not ask what Balthazar could possibly still owe Lucifer. Instead, she turns their conversation toward mundane topics, tells him stories about her co-workers and how her cat knocked over her favorite vase. In return, he tells her about his day so far in prison, and even offers some information about his childhood.

“I was thinking,” he says when their time is almost up. “You may want to record some of our conversations.”

“Why?”

“You are the only person in the world who has gotten an actual interview with me,” Lucifer reminds her. “But after I die, there will inevitably be things written about me. More than there is now, that is. I know that several authors have written crime books about my work.” His nose wrinkles in disgust, and he looks as though he wants to spit onto the floor. “To have the truth of it out there is a…comforting idea, shall we say?”

“You want me to write your biography?”

“Who better?” Lucifer asks. “I regret that we do not have more time in person, but I have plenty of time to write.”

“I’ll think about it,” Anna promises. She knows that there are, in fact, several books out there about various murders that Lucifer was convicted of, and a few episodes of various true crime television shows as well. But despite her fascination with him over the years, she has never read one. “Just…start writing. We’ll talk. I’ll see if there’s enough material.”

Lucifer waves a dismissive hand. “Meg will help you.”

“What did you do to her?” Anna asks. “How can she possibly be loyal to you after you cut half her face off?”

Lucifer shrugs. “She loves me. I was half a boyfriend and half a father figure to her. I don’t pretend to understand her. But she was with me for nearly five years before she lay down on my table and begged me to release her soul from this Earth. She is loyal, and she has her uses, and I am…” Lucifer’s face softens slightly and he closes his eyes. “I am fond of her.”

Anna swallows. “She should be waiting after me.”

“I am fond of you as well, make no mistake,” Lucifer continues. “I enjoy our talks, and the letters, and the color that you bring to my world.”

“I don’t love you,” Anna blurts, because she doesn’t love him, not even a little bit. But she _does_ understand the way that he feels, because she feels that way, too. But there’s an hourglass in her head that she’s reminded of every time she sees him or reads one of his letters, a terrifying reminder that the beauty of her world will be gone in just a few short months, extinguished with the life of the man in front of her.

“I don’t love you, either,” Lucifer assures her. But Anna notices that there is sadness clouding over the sky-blue of his eyes. “Our time is up. I will see you next week?”

“I’ll be here,” Anna promises. In impulse, she presses her hand against the Plexiglas separating them, fingers spread wide. Lucifer gives her a small, sad smile and gently rests his hand on the other side. His fingers are so long, his hands so big, that they could easily crush hers, just like they crushed the throats of so many others.

Anna nods, hangs her phone up, and leaves. She waits for Meg in the lobby, and follows the girl to the restaurant Balthazar has indicated.

As Meg had told her, the restaurant is stupidly expensive, and Anna knows that she’s not dressed up enough for it at all. Neither is Meg, who is wearing tight jeans, an even tighter top, and a flannel shirt against the chill in the air.

“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” Anna suggests. Meg shrugs and begins to scan the parking lot for Balthazar.

“Balt doesn’t give two shits about what we dress like. If these people are smart, they won’t, either. He can pretty much do whatever he wants. One of the perks of being stupidly rich. Oh, there he is! Balt! Over here!”

Anna spies a tall, skinny man walking toward them and swallows hard. He looks a little older than Lucifer, and is so skinny that she would almost call him lanky. His hair is the same sandy color as Lucifer’s, and as he gets closer, Anna can see pale stubble covering his tan chin. He’s dressed almost as casually as them, in dark jeans and a gray, slightly-baggy t-shirt, a blazer thrown over it his one and only attempt at looking dressy. Even his sneakers look beat-up.

He has the same sparkling blue eyes as Lucifer does.

“Meg, darling, must you yell so loud?” he asks when he approaches them. “I’d rather keep my name a bit of a secret.”

Meg rolls her eyes. “Okay, Balt. Sorry.”

Balthazar smiles and turns to Anna. “And this must be the journalist I’ve heard so much about. Balthazar, at your service, Miss.”

Anna sticks her hand out. “Anna Milton.”

“Well, let’s get something to eat, and we have things to discuss.”

The people staffing the restaurant glare that their attire, but jump to attention as soon as Balthazar gives them his name. Anna notices that Meg seems completely used to the way the staff flutters about them, but she still feels a knot growing in her belly. She should not be here with these people, casually discussing the funeral of her soulmate while they nibble on overpriced food and drink ridiculously expensive wine the color of her hair.

According to Meg, the funeral will be short, an hour or two for a viewing, a short prayer service, and then burial in the afternoon, with another short prayer service at the gravesite. The media will probably be all over it. Balthazar promises to try to help with that part. They will announce things to almost no one, simply inviting a few surviving family members that might want to grieve, to be there to say goodbye.

“If they even come,” Meg says bitterly. Anna learns that Lucifer has two sisters and a brother that are still living, and that they refuse to acknowledge him as their kin, mostly. “Gabriel writes sometimes. Hael and Hannah refuse to even do that much.”

“We’ll begin the preparations as soon as the state lets us have the body,” Balthazar promises. “Meg and I are going to look at coffins tomorrow. Would you like to come, Anna?”

Anna shakes her head.

Balthazar simply shrugs. “I thought not. If there is something you’d like to say at the service, do let me know.”

“I don’t know if I can. I don’t really know him that well,” Anna admits.

“You’re his soulmate,” Meg insists. “That means you’re closer to him than anyone but cosmic command, or whatever it is that sets this up.”

Balthazar puts a hand on Meg’s arm to quiet her. Anna notices the way they look at each other, expressions soft and understanding, and Anna realizes that they share a kinship that she will never know.

“I’ll think about it,” Anna compromises. 

.

Lucifer’s letters grow longer, detailing his childhood and early years, and even talking about his murders. At the end he always includes the same boring details he did before, talking about yard time and prison gossip and his lunches.

Anna responds by writing back longer letters as well. She’s no great artist, but she supposes she is a passable one, and tries painstakingly to draw and color some of the things she sees while out. Butterflies and birds chase each other through the margins of her letters, bees land on flowers on the bottom, and she even obtains a picture of Claudandus and manages to draw a pretty acceptable portrait in color.

She goes to see him every week without fail, making the long drive up, and interviews him in person, writing down the details of his life during the trial, and his early time in prison. When he tells her that he had a dog named Copper as a child, she laughs and says that _The Fox and the Hound_ was always her favorite Disney movie, despite its heartbreaking ending. Lucifer asks if she fancies herself a fox because of her hair. In his next letter, Anna finds a picture of a fox drawn at the very bottom.

She saves all his letters in a locked drawer of her desk.

.

Fall begins to fade into winter, and Anna learns the exact date of Lucifer’s execution.

“January twenty third,” he tells her. “Two months, about. Tell me, do you have any plans for Thanksgiving? I do miss the food outside.”

“How can you be so casual about it?” Anna asks. She pulls her cranberry-red coat closer around her, hugging herself.

“I have known it was coming for a long time, Anna,” he says gently.

“There has to be something we can do,” Anna argues. “An appeal, _something.”_

His gaze is steady, blue eyes unwavering. “Anna, let me ask you a question. If you and I weren’t so-called soulmates, would you care? Truly, would you? My death also means the death of your being able to see color. It is in your best interest to keep me alive. If it were not for that, you would be out there calling for my blood like all the rest.”

Anna shakes her head. “I would care. I would want you to live.”

“Then you must take into account what I want,” Lucifer argues. “I have already spent too many years of my life in a cage. I’ve no desire to spend the next thirty, forty, fifty years here.”

Anna drops her gaze to her lap. If she’s being truly honest with herself, no, she wouldn’t care if Lucifer lived or died if she couldn’t see color. She might even wish for him to die so she can forever hold the title of the only person to ever get an interview with him.

“I don’t want it to go back to the way it was,” Anna confesses. “And I enjoy our talks. And our letters. I like seeing you.”

“You can continue to see me,” Lucifer assures her. “If we admit our connection, I might even be able to have an hour with you before the actual event. Meg is coming for it, you know. Balthazar is not. The families of those I’ve killed will be there as well. I would like you to attend.”

“I don’t want to watch you die,” Anna says firmly.

“I thought not. However, I would very much like you to be the last thing I see.”

Anna blinks in surprise. “Me? Why?”

He smiles at her. “Your hair. It was the first color I saw. Red, like the sunset. I would like it to be the last as well.”

“I’ll try to be there,” Anna promises. “But let me talk to Balthazar. There must be something he can do. Something to stave it off just a few more months. There are people that sit on death row for years and years.”

“Now you’re just being selfish,” Lucifer chides. “Believe me, if I could escape, I would. But I would never stop killing. It is not in my nature to simply disappear and live a quiet life. You would not be able to come with me, either. You do not strike me as the type of girl that would enjoy dismembering housewives and bankers and hobos and prostitutes.”

Anna shudders. “No. No, I wouldn’t. Couldn’t.”

He nods. “I will not live the rest of my life in a cage, Anna. You will move on.”

She shakes her head. “I’ll go nuts. I can’t go back to shades of gray.”

“It has been done before. You’re stronger than you think, Anna.”

.

She has Thanksgiving with Castiel, the two of them crammed into his small house, and spends the whole time thinking of Lucifer. He has mentioned many times in his letters that prison food is less than good, and that he is truly looking forward to his last meal.

“Will you come to the burial with me?” she asks her brother as they do the dishes. “I know you don’t know him, but…”

“If you need me there for support, I’ll be there,” Castiel tells her. He gently rests his hand over hers and squeezes their fingers together. Anna can see that his blue eyes, normally bright and happy, are clouded. “Then this will all be over and we can go back to normal.”

“I don’t think I remember what it feels like,” Anna says. “I’m used to the color now, Castiel. I’m used to your eyes being blue, to my hair being red, to seeing the sunset and sunrise and the sky being blue.”

Castiel squeezes her hand again. “You’ll adjust.”

.

Anna comes home to another letter and, oddly, a ring of reporters outside of her apartment building. She cannot hear them through her earbuds, and does not stop when they wave to her. She figures that something has happened to someone in her building, that one of her neighbors has maybe won the lottery or killed someone, and trots inside her house to read her latest letter from Lucifer.

_Dear Anna,_

_I’m sorry. I am very, truly sorry. Our mutual friend will attempt some damage control. One of the guards leaked our relationship to the press. I am quite sure it was not Sam, but I have no idea who it is. As you know, no correspondence is truly private._

_-Lucifer._

Anna swears that everything stops. She cannot breathe, hear, think, cannot even feel her own heart beating in her chest. The room swirls around her, turning into a multicolored blur.

They know, everyone knows, and the reporters are there for _her._ To them, she’s nothing but another stupid, silly girl in love with a horrific death row serial killer.

Her phone rings. Anna ignores it until it stops. It rings again, and this time Anna picks it up and checks the caller ID.

“You’re in deeeeeeeep shit now, Red,” Meg drawls.

Anna bursts out crying.

“No, no, calm down, Anna,” Meg orders. “Just calm down, okay? It’s not that bad, I promise.”

“How did this even happen?” Anna wails.

“Some dick at the prison wanting to make a splash in the press now that the date’s so close did it,” Meg answers. “Just keep your head up and don’t talk to them. Don’t even look at them. Balthazar will find out who did it and get him fired.”

Anna sniffs. “But Lucifer doesn’t even know who did it.”

“Balthazar will help fix things,” Meg soothes. “And after January, it’ll all be over. They’ll drift away after that. I promise.”

Anna sniffs again. “I’m still coming up this weekend.”

“I’ll see you then,” Meg says. “Call me if you need anything. I’ll drive down and sneak you out.”

Anna hangs up the phone. Less than five minutes later, it rings again. Her boss.

He sounds absolutely flabbergasted, and tells Anna not to bother to come in the next day, but to keep her head down. But it is what he says at the end that surprises her.

“I am so, so sorry that I approved your interview,” he says. “If I hadn’t sent you there, you wouldn’t have met him, and this never would have happened.”

“I wouldn’t give up being able to see color for anything,” Anna tells him truthfully.

She can hear the smile in her boss’ voice. “I’m glad. Get some rest. I think you’ll need it.”

Balthazar calls next. Unlike both Meg and her boss, there is no pity in his voice. “I know who did it, and I’ll have that bastard’s job.”

Anna breathes a weary sigh. “Thank God. Who?”

“Some guard named Michael who really hates Lucifer,” Balthazar tells her. “He’s the one who leaked to the press that Lucifer has a soulmate, and that it was you. Do you need anything? We can get you out of there and to a new location lickity-split.”

“I think it’s best that I stay here,” Anna says. “Meg tells me that they’ve found her before at the house you’ve provided for her.”

“This will all be over soon,” Balthazar assures her.

Anna squeezes her eyes shut and resists the urge to cry again. “I know.”

.

Lucifer’s letters still flow in with surprising regularity, and she goes to see him every week. Between that, she attempts Christmas shopping, dodging reporters and people trying to snap her picture. Thankfully, no one at her own paper seems too obsessed with it, not even her boss. They all continue as if nothing ever happened.

On the Internet, people throw names at her left and right. Many accuse her of being brainwashed by Lucifer, like Meg was, like the rest of his fans are. Others express their disgust that she was stupid enough to fall in love with a death row serial killer. A surprising faction talk about how sad it is that her soulmate is going to die in a few short weeks. A few people say that she should be left alone, to mourn in peace, because his execution date is coming soon.

She can give Lucifer nothing for Christmas, not where he is, and it does not fall on a weekend, so she cannot see him. Instead, she plans to spend the day with Castiel up at his house, and then go over to see Lucifer over the weekend. Meg and Balthazar invite her to some fancy place for dinner, and tell her to bring her brother along if she wants, but Anna declines. All they talk about now is the funeral dates and how to keep it quiet and flowers and the prayer service and what to do with her soulmate’s few belongings, and she just wants to forget what is going to happen in a month, if only for a day.

Anna has to admit that she is glad that she can see color during the Christmas season, though. Fake Christmas trees are gray and dull, but the real ones are a brilliant green, and when she sees them draped with lights, she loses her breath with awe. She is surprised at how blue snow looks when shadows fall over it, instead of just stark white.

.

Before she leaves to see Castiel, Anna gets another letter.

_Dear Anna,_

_I know that life has been difficult since the news about our situation was revealed. However, there is one good thing that has come out of it. We have been granted permission for a single hour of solitary time together before I am to die. This time is normally reserved for family, such as brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, or spouses and children. However, I have been informed by our mutual friends that none of my siblings will be coming to sit with me. Meg will not be allowed, either. This time will belong to you and I alone. And our guard, of course. No touching is allowed, but we will have time together, to sit beside each other and talk and pray._

_Christmas dinner here will be absolutely dreadful, as it always is, but I am looking forward to your visit, as I always am. Don’t fret about what is being said online. It will all be over soon, I promise you._

_Enclosed, I offer you a gift. I hope that it hasn’t been smudged too much by the postal service._

_Love,_

_Lucifer._

Anna swallows hard and reaches a trembling hand into the envelope to pull out a second piece of paper. Inside, she finds a messy sketch of herself, clearly done from memory, holding a cat that looks an awful lot like Claudandus. It is in black and gray, since he clearly cannot have colored pencils or paints, and is slightly smudged, done on blue-lined paper. There’s a crease in the middle of it from where it has been folded and stuffed inside the envelope.

His signature is in the corner.

Anna opens up a frame that holds an old picture of her and Castiel holding hands as children, puts it aside, and gently slides her portrait into it. She tucks the picture of her and Castiel away, promising to put it in another frame later, and then locks the letter with Lucifer’s love away in the drawer with the others.

She does not know if he’s lying or not, but she chooses to believe it.

.

“Did you enjoy Christmas?” Lucifer asks her when she slides into her seat and picks up the phone.

“I liked the drawing. It was really good.”

Lucifer shrugs. “Your face is memorable, and I wanted to pay you back for the one you did of Claudandus for me. Tell me what you ate.”

Anna laughs and tells him about Christmas dinner. It had been nothing special, a small ham and some mashed potatoes shared between her and Castiel. Presents were nothing special, either, a book for him and a pair of earrings for her, but she’d been happy with the jewelry. She tilts her head to show off the dangly gold hoops for him. It’s fake gold, of course, but pretty, and she smiles when he tells her so.

“The media is mostly out of my hair,” she continues. “Though they’ll probably be back around the…the funeral.” She swallows hard and blinks to try to hold back tears.

“That they will be. It’ll calm down soon after that, though,” Lucifer promises. “Meg tells me that they’re going to try to keep the location of my grave a secret.”

Anna nods. “So it won’t be…defaced.”

“That secret will not hold for long. People will talk. Someone will see it. Someone will deface my headstone, or knock it down, or attempt to steal my corpse.”

“You’ll have a vault,” Anna assures him. “No one will be able to get into that. Meg and I will take care of your headstone. And you’re in a pretty remote part of the cemetery. We thought about burying you under a fake name, but…”

He shakes his head. “Tell me, will my siblings be coming?”

Anna shrugs. “I don’t know. Meg said that Gabriel called her and asked for the date, but Hannah and Hael never returned her calls.”

Lucifer looks sad for a moment. “I thought not. Tell me, Anna, do you wish to marry, or petition the court for a sperm sample should you wish to have a child sometime in the future?”

Stunned by his proposal, Anna drops the phone. The guard looks up in alarm at the noise, but Anna shakes her head at him and picks it up again.

“No, no,” she says. “No to both.”

“I thought so, but I felt it best to ask.”

“They would never leave me alone if I had your child. That child would want to know who their father is one day, and I don’t know if I could tell them the truth.”

Lucifer holds up his hand. “I understand, Anna. I thought I would offer, just in case.”

When they part, Anna can’t deny that he looks slightly disappointed.

Balthazar is waiting for her when she leaves the prison. She ignores her own car and slips into his. “Hey.”

“I have a proposal for you, Anna,” Balthazar says. “Quit your job. Come back with me to England when all of this is over. Take a break.”

“I can’t quit my job,” Anna says stiffly. “I need a job.”

Balthazar waves a dismissive hand. “You’ll get another.”

Anna glares at him. “It isn’t that easy.”

“It is when I’m backing you,” Balthazar points out. “Think about it, Anna. You’ll need time to heal.”

“Working will help me forget.”

“Working in a place where everyone knows that you’re the girlfriend of a serial killer. I commend your stubborn-headedness to stay in the belly of the beast, but it might not be best. My family has a house out in the country. Beautiful views, a pool. It’s a quiet place to heal.”

“I can’t just do nothing. I’ll go stir crazy.”

“Meg tells me that Lucifer wants you to write a biography. Work on that,” Balthazar suggests. “Or write about your experience being the soulmate of one of the world’s greatest serial killers. The public will eat that shit up.”

“Or tear me apart for it.”

“But you’ll make a tidy profit off of it,” Balthazar argues. “Enough to maybe disappear somewhere and start a new life.”

Anna looks down and studies her blood-red boots, the ones that she remembers Lucifer liking. “Is Meg coming?”

“She may. She’s not decided yet. We don’t know if we can bring Claudandus.”

“I’ll have to leave Muffin with Castiel,” Anna mutters. She takes a deep breath. “I’ll think about it.”

Two days later, she quits her job. On the way home, she takes a walk through the park and wishes it were spring, so she could see the greenery one more time before Lucifer dies.

She thinks that she should’ve taken that trip to the Amazon.

.

She still writes letters, sits down every day with her different colored pens and scrawls out her day to Lucifer. She has no more interesting stories from work, since she no longer goes, but she still describes her day in minute detail. She describes her outfits, her meals, the little things her cat does. In return, Lucifer does the same. Anna lies in bed to read his letters and imagines him beside her, telling her about his day.

She tries to imagine him with a normal job, tries to imagine him living a normal life. He’d been a welder, before he’d started killing. He could do that. He could come home to her every day and tell her stories about his coworkers and the things he’d done that day. They could stock their home with silly books and serious books and go for walks in the park on weekends and try to identify the colors swirling in the leaves in the fall and name the colors of the sunset.

She imagines making love to him with the window open, the sun pouring over his body, the different shades that would spread over his flesh at different angles because of the light.

She wonders what their children would look like, if they would get his sandy hair or her red hair.

Anna snaps herself out of the fantasy and rises to tuck his letter away. Even if they’d met under different circumstances, years before he got caught, it never would’ve happened. Lucifer isn’t a man for family or normal jobs or walks in the park on Sundays. He loves killing too much, loves hurting people and controlling them.

But she holds onto the fantasy as she falls asleep and dreams of a blue-eyed, redheaded girl with Lucifer’s nose and her cheekbones that runs to her father’s arms. When she wakes, Anna cries for the daughter she will never have and the life that she will never live.

.

“Will you wear the skirt I like? The purple one?” Lucifer asks her.

“And the blood red boots,” Anna promises. It is their final visit before his execution in four days, when they will finally be able to sit next to each other. “Have you decided on your last meal?”

“You’ll laugh.”

“I won’t. As long as it isn’t something ridiculous like a gallon of ice cream.”

“Nothing that ridiculous,” Lucifer promises. “Although, there is ice cream at the end. Escargot. French toast. Mint chocolate chip ice cream with whipped cream. And hot chocolate.”

Anna makes a face. The absurd combination makes it impossible for her to be sad. “That does not go together at all.”

“I’ll make it work.”

“They’ll shave your head,” Anna says sadly. “You won’t look right without your hair.”

“I could have them save the clippings for you, if you like,” Lucifer offers. Anna thinks it is a bit creepy, but nods.

“Please.”

They sit in silence for a while. In four days, her soulmate dies.

She does not doubt that he is the only one that she will ever have. She has heard tales of someone having more than one soulmate, of course, but it is so rare to even find your first one that the chances of finding your second are slim to none. She could travel the world and never find another, never see color again.

“You’re moving to England with Balthazar?” Lucifer presses, breaking the silence. “After the burial?”

“We’re leaving after the funeral. He thinks it’ll be good for me. To heal.”

Lucifer nods. “Do you love me?”

Anna looks away from him. “No. No, I don’t think so. I could love you, if we had more time, if things were different. I _could.”_

“I have no doubt that you could, if we had more time,” he says. “Thank you for not lying to me.”

Anna wills herself not to cry. “Do you love me?”

“I don’t lie,” Lucifer says gently. “I have a reputation for lying, but I am almost always truthful.”

Anna squeezes her eyes shut. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I don’t love you.”

“It is better this way,” Lucifer soothes. “You will not grieve as much. Our time is up, Anna. I will see you in four days. Please, wear the skirt. And the boots.”

She nods and stands. When she enters the waiting room, she sees Meg quietly crying in a chair. They hug briefly.

“See you soon,” Meg promises. “I’ll meet you back at the house?”

Anna nods and goes out to her car, but does not leave. Instead, she stares at the clear blue sky and cries.

.

“We have to go in,” Meg says. “You have to, at least. You get an hour with him.”

Surprisingly, Meg does not sound bitter. Instead, she just sounds sad.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Anna frets. She wears no makeup, knowing that she will most likely cry it off, anyway. She pulls her cranberry coat closer around her and stares down at it, knowing that, in a few short hours, she will never see this color again.

“There are two viewing rooms,” Meg says. “One for the press and one for…us.” She turns around and gasps when she sees another car. “Gabriel is here.”

Anna turns to see Lucifer’s brother for the first time. He’s a little younger than Lucifer, and his hair is a little darker. He’s slightly rounder, too, softer looking.

“I don’t want to meet him,” Anna says. “I just…not now.”

“Go inside,” Meg orders. “I’ll talk to him. I’ll see you in the viewing room.”

Anna delicately slips from the car and walks toward the prison, keeping her eyes trained on the sky the whole way. When she emerges, it will be gray again. She thanks God that it is clear and blue and wonderful today, instead of covered by soapy gray clouds.

Already, there is press gathered outside, waiting to interview the witnesses. One of them spots her and snaps a picture that is followed by a dozen more flashes. Anna ignores them all and walks into the cold gray building and tries to keep her breathing steady.

She manages not to cry as they pat her down and take away her purse and read the rules. She manages not to cry at the guard, a pudgy man with oily black hair and a pimple throbbing angry and red on his cheek, leads her to the room where she will spend her final hour with Lucifer.

But then he shows her through the door and Lucifer is there, sitting calmly in one of the uncomfortable gray plastic chairs as if he doesn’t have a care in the world, and she bursts into tears. The guard looks disgusted and shows himself out. Sam, standing near Lucifer, looks more sympathetic.

“Stop that now,” Lucifer says. “Hush and sit.”

Anna tries to calm her tears and messily wipes her face with her hand. “How was your last meal?”

“As delicious as I hoped. But, as you said, snails and ice cream do not make good partners. I might take a few people out with my own gas by the time this is over.”

Absurdly, Anna laughs. His joke is enough to calm her tears, and she takes a few trembling steps toward him to sink into a chair. They sit as close as they can without touching, so close that she can feel the heat of his body.

“Are you afraid?” she asks.

“No,” he answers. “In fact, I am rather looking forward to it. It will be nice to see somewhere other than this cage.”

Anna holds her tongue. She knows what they are saying out there, knows that people are calling for Lucifer to burn in Hell for all eternity. She begins to cry again.

“You’ll need some water after all that crying,” Lucifer observes. “Save your strength and do not weep for me. This is not the end. We will be together again.”

“We won’t,” she sobs. She wants to bury her face in her hands, wants to run back home and hop into her bed and hide there until this whole thing is over, until her world is once again shades of gray. She wants to go back in time and tell her silly, stupid college-student self to pick a different obsession, that serial killers are not for her. She wants it to be _over._

When she tells him that, Lucifer smiles. “And now you know how I feel. My work is done, Anna, and my Father will be pleased with it. I will be with him. One day we all will.”

Anna swallows hard. She forces herself to look into his eyes, forces herself to focus on that beautiful sky blue, that first color she ever saw. “I wish I could hold your hand.”

“I do, too,” he says. “Sit. Pray with me.”

She does. Together, they bow their heads and say the Lord’s Prayer. She’s never been very religious, and she suspects that Lucifer isn’t really, either, just deluded into thinking he was doing God’s work, or using it as an excuse for his actions. Still, she prays with him.

They sit in silence for a while, staring into each other’s eyes. She hears the clock ticking on the wall behind them; feeling like time is passing too quickly and too slowly all at once.

“Talk to me,” she says finally. “Just…talk. I want to listen to your voice.”

He does. He thanks her for wearing his favorite outfit. He talks about his cat, talks about his early days with Meg, talks about childhood trips to the seaside with Gabriel and his mother and father, talks about spending time with Hannah and Hael when they were younger, when he only had a few murders to his name. Anna watches the way his mouth moves as he does, watches the subtle changes in his face as the bones and muscles shift with his speech.

“Time is almost up,” Sam says. “Five more minutes, Anna.”

Anna swallows hard. “It isn’t enough time.” She sighs and tightens her hands into fists, wishing she could hold his. “I wish I could’ve loved you. I wish things were different.”

Lucifer smiles at her. His eyes are bright and happy. “You wish you’d never met me.”

“I wish I didn’t have to go through this,” Anna corrects. “I wish I didn’t have to watch you die. But I have something for you.”

“A present? At this hour?”

Anna nods and bites her lip as hard as she can, until she feels blood well up under her teeth. She releases her lip and resists the urge to lick away the blood or wipe it away with the back of her hand. Instead, she lets it well up freely and drip down her chin to stain her skirt.

Lucifer stares at her with obvious lust in his eyes. His tongue darts out for a moment and he leans forward, as if to try to taste her, but a sharp sound from Sam makes him pull back.

“That is the sweetest sight I’ve ever seen,” Lucifer breathes. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she says stupidly. Sam clears his throat and the door opens. The same oily haired guard as before steps in.

“Time’s up,” he says gruffly. “Angel, your lawyer’s here.”

Anna feels frozen, and completely unwilling to move from her chair when she imagines him walking to execution chamber alone. Sam comes over and squeezes her arm, producing a tissue as he does.

“It’s time to go, Anna,” he says gently. “Here. Wipe your face.”

Anna nods and takes the tissue. Trembling, she goes to stand, but stops when Lucifer breaks the no touching rule and reaches out. Their fingers brush for just the barest moment, sending a shock through Anna’s system, and before Sam can pull her away Anna twines their fingers together and squeezes his hand hard. A drop of blood falls from her chin and lands on the back of his hand.

“No touching!” the oily-haired guard barks. Sam wrenches her away from Lucifer, almost tipping her out of her chair. Trembling, she stands.

“Goodbye,” Anna says.

Lucifer licks her blood from the back of his hand. For the first time since she met him, Anna feels a sexual thrill go through her when she looks at Lucifer.

“Goodbye,” he echoes. “I’ll be looking for you.”

The guard goes to drag her out. Anna lets him, but looks back the whole time, eyes locked on Lucifer’s until she is dragged out of his sight.

Anna hastily wipes her lip with the tissue and goes to meet Meg and the others. The families of the victims that have decided to attend stay far away from her. Some send her hateful glances, while others look at her with sympathy or pity.

When Meg opens her arms, Anna doesn’t hesitate to go into them. She lets the other woman hold her for a minute, the two of them clinging to each other, before Anna feels a tap on her shoulder and lifts her head to see Gabriel staring at her.

“Hannah and Hael wouldn’t come,” he says. “They said that it would be too painful for them to see it. But I had to be here. You must be Anna, his…”

“Girlfriend,” Anna supplies. The word sounds silly coming from her mouth in relation to Lucifer, but it is the closet word to what she is. “His soulmate.”

There is no further talk as they’re ushered into the viewing room. Gabriel sits on one side of her and Meg on the other. Silently, the three of them join hands and stare at the ugly beige curtain covering the glass. A few of the other people behind them talk in low voices. Apparently, they all belong to some sort of support group.

Meg’s face is an unreadable mask. But her scar stands out, pale and puckered, a constant reminder of her five years with Lucifer. In contrast, Gabriel is unscarred, but full of childhood memories of his brother.

Anna licks her lower lip and feels truly flattered that it was her blood that was Lucifer’s true last meal.

The curtain lifts, and Anna hears Meg swallow hard next to her. A collective hush falls over the room until it is as silent as death.

He looks so small and fragile strapped down to the chair that Anna wants to weep. They wrap around his legs and arms and waist, keeping him sitting upright in the chair, posture perfect. A helmet sits on his head, clenched tight under his jaw. Water drips down his face onto his lap.

But he does not look afraid. He does not look at either Meg or Gabriel, but instead Anna finds his eyes trained directly on her, studying her face and hair and the cut on her lip that is beginning to clot. Anna grips Meg and Gabriel’s hands harder.

 _I will not look away,_ she promises herself. _I will not look away._

Another guard comes up and places a large, black microphone in front of Lucifer’s face. His last words. The last thing he will ever say in this life.

He looks directly at Anna when he says them.

“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned,” he says. Anna hears someone snort in disgust behind her, but does not turn to look. Instead, she stares into Lucifer’s eyes.

 _Blue, like the sky, like the ocean, like clear, fresh lakes, and mountain streams; like bluebirds and blue jays and ice and butterflies and certain types of fish,_ she thinks.  _The first color I ever saw. The last color I’ll ever see._

The other men leave the room, and Anna knows what is about to happen. Her mouth goes dry and her heart pounds in her chest and she desperately wishes to be anywhere but here in this room. But she does not look away. She promised him, promised herself, and she will keep her promise.

She hears a whirring noise, no doubt some motor starting, and steels herself. Lucifer sets his mouth into a firm line and keeps his eyes on hers.

A bang sounds from somewhere. Less than five seconds later, Anna watches in horror as Lucifer convulses in the chair, his eyes finally ripped from hers by the force of the electricity coursing through him. The straps hold him down, keeping him pinned even as he thrashes desperately. Meg gasps in horror next to her and grips Anna’s hand with bone-grinding force, and yet she still does not look away. She wants to vomit, wants to run and hide, but she looks and looks and looks, eyes watering and heart pounding, until she is forced to blink.

Lucifer slumps in his chair, eyes closed and chest steady, completely limp and lifeless. It lasts all of fifteen, maybe twenty seconds, the most horrible, gut-wrenching seconds of Anna’s life.

She blinks and the world is gray again. There is no color in Lucifer’s body, or in her own hands. She looks at Meg and sees that once again the girl’s skin is ashen. She looks at Gabriel and finds his hair a soft gray instead of blonde.

The bang sounds again and Lucifer’s lifeless body convulses with it.

“No,” Anna whispers in horror. The deed is done, the deed is done and her soulmate is dead, she could’ve told anyone that. Later, she knows, Gabriel or Meg or Balthazar will tell her that it is protocol, to be sure that the act is truly done. But they could have just asked her, could’ve taken one look at her face and known that Luc Angel was dead and gone and never coming back.

She squeezes her eyes shut and does not watch the second bout of electricity course through him. He’s dead. She watched him die. She was the last thing he ever saw. She kept her promise.

She does not open her eyes even when a pleasant voice comes over the loudspeaker in the room. “The legal execution of Luc Angel has been accomplished.”

“He didn’t suffer enough,” mutters a female voice behind her. Anna squeezes her eyes shut tighter, because the woman is right. Lucifer died proud and calm and happy and quick, not in terror and pain like so many of his victims, like one of this woman’s loved ones. He deserved it, deserved to be punished for his crimes.

But it still hurts.

She feels a soft, soothing hand on her back and opens her eyes to see that the curtain has been drawn again.

“It’s over,” Meg soothes. Anna sees tear tracks on the girl’s face. “It’s done.”

Anna throws herself into Meg’s arms and cries. They are the last to stumble out of the prison, where the sky and trees and snow are gray, gray, gray and they are bombarded by reporters.

Anna hides her face in Meg’s shoulder as they push forward and ask questions and take statements from the other people present. One of them shoves a microphone into Anna’s face.

“Anna Milton, can you tell us how you feel?” the woman asks. Her voice is all newscaster, and holds no sympathy or pity or anger.

Meg angrily bats the microphone away.

“Yeah,” Meg snarls. “I say go fuck yourself, you leech, and leave us alone.”

Anna goes home with Meg, unwilling to see even Castiel. Claudandus is there, and he slides into the guest bed with Anna and presses against her side, as if he, too, senses that his master is never coming back.

Anna holds the cat and cries long into the night.

.

Balthazar tells them that they will have the body back in a few days, and that the funeral will be in a week or so. During that time, Anna sits in her apartment and packs what she will need for England. Castiel has agreed to take Muffin. Balthazar has agreed to store her furniture and pay the price for breaking her lease early. All she takes are clothes and her laptop and a few other things that she will need. 

She gets teary-eyed every time she looks at the portrait Lucifer drew of her. She keeps his letters, signed with his love, locked away in the drawer of her desk, unable to look at them. She tries to distract herself with the television and Internet and searching for a suitable dress for the burial and funeral. But every time she clicks on the news or boots up her computer, there seems to be something about Lucifer on there, be it his picture or an interview with someone who was in the viewing room, or an article about what it was like to see him die.

The day before the funeral, Gabriel shows up at her door. He’s soaked from the rain outside, and it drips off of him and onto the small box he carries. She’s dressed in nothing but her soft winter nightgown and robe and slippers, but invites him in, anyway.

His eyes are puffy, the area around them a dark gray, as if he has been crying.

“Thanks,” he says, stripping off his coat and hanging it on the coat tree by the door. “But I’m not staying long. I just wanted to give you some things. Things that my brother said that you were supposed to have.”

Anna swallows hard. “Thank you. But I don’t think I’m ready to look.”

“It’s nothing special. He didn’t have much when he passed, obviously,” Gabriel tells her. “But he wanted you to have some things. He kept all the letters you wrote him. There are some books that he enjoyed. His Bible.”

“I can’t,” Anna protests.

Gabriel opens the box, anyway. When Anna peeks inside, she can see her drawing of Claudandus on the top. She reaches for it with trembling fingers.

“He had some jewelry, a few necklaces, rings, some watches. Those were split between you, Meg, and us. Hannah and Hael and I all decided to give our portion to you. We don’t want them.”

“He’s still your brother,” Anna croaks.

“I loved my brother,” Gabriel says. “Truly, I did. But he was also a great, big bag of dicks, to put it lightly. I don’t want to be associated with him. I don’t want anything of his. Hael and Hannah feel the same way.” His gaze softens. “You must have really loved him.”

“I didn’t,” Anna says flatly. “I didn’t get the chance to.”

“Well, he must have really loved you, then.”

“He says he does,” Anna says before she can catch herself. She closes her eyes. “I mean, he _said_ that he _did.”_

“I’ll see you tomorrow at the funeral home. There won’t be a church service. No church in their right mind would let us in, anyway.”

Anna nods, but does not open her eyes. “Please, leave.”

She does not move until Gabriel shuts the door behind him. She falls to her knees next to the box and slowly draws out its contents. As promised, she finds her letters to Lucifer stacked neatly at the top. He’s saved all of them, from her long, sprawling ones about her childhood and her cat to the short, boring ones about her casualness of her day. She knows that once they held color, and that to someone out there, they still do. But now all she sees is gray, gray, gray and white and black.

At the bottom, she finds a small stack of beat-up, clearly loved books. When she flips through one, she finds passages underlined and starred, and notes in the margins written in Lucifer’s small, neat handwriting. Under them, sealed in a Ziploc baggie, she finds a chain that might have once been gold but now looks gray, a man’s Rolex, and Lucifer’s class ring from High School. In another, she finds a wooden cross attached to a leather cord, some sort of novelty necklace with a turtle pendant made of silver-gray metal, and a small, silver-gray ring that she can just fit onto her middle finger without it falling off.

She needs to take a link out of the watch to make it wearable, so she sets that aside and slips the cross necklace over her head. The wood settles, cold, between her breasts, but is soon warmed by her body.

She looks down at the ring and is glad she did not marry him.

.

The day of his funeral, it does not rain. Castiel drives her, parks, and goes down the street for a coffee and breakfast. He offers to come to the service with her, but Anna shakes it off. Meg will be inside, and Balthazar, and Lucifer’s girls that she has yet to meet. The viewing will be no more than two hours, and then off to the gravesite for burial. She will need Castiel then, she tells him, so he goes, and leaves her to mourn with the support of people who knew Lucifer.

Anna picks imaginary lint from the skirt of her dress. She clutches her once cranberry-red coat around her and marches inside, careful on the icy sidewalk. Meg and Gabriel and Balthazar greet her at the door next to two girls that she does not know but thinks must be Hael and Hannah. They’re both young, younger than her, and can’t have known Lucifer before he started killing. Neither of them look sad. They both simply look frustrated that they have to be there, and were obviously dragged by Gabriel.

She and Meg hug silently. Balthazar squeezes her hand. Gabriel gives her a polite nod.

“Is this one of his _fans?”_ the shorter of the two girls asks. She has black hair that falls to the middle of her back, and is dressed in black pants and a dark-grey sweater against the cold. Her nose is wrinkled in disgust and her voice drips with it, too.

“Be polite,” Gabriel growls. “She was his soulmate.”

“He didn’t deserve one,” the other girl says. Her hair is a dark gray, but not quite black like her sister’s. Anna thinks that, if she were able to see colors again, it might be brown, because it matches the shade of gray on one of the trees not too far away.

Anna makes a mental note to stay far away from the two of them. She knows that she will find no love with Lucifer’s family. Meg reaches down to clutch her hand, and Anna feels a string of rosary beads digging into her palm.

“Neither of them chose it,” Meg snaps.

 _“You_ chose him,” the shorter girl snarls. _“You_ were the idiot that followed him and believed he loved you. Luc didn’t love anyone. He was a psycho and now he’s burning in Hell where he belongs.”

“Shut up, Hael!” Gabriel orders. The girl glares, but shuts her mouth. The other one, clearly Hannah, opens her mouth to speak, but closes it when Gabriel shoots her a warning look.

The doors open. The funeral director looks almost fearful as they slip in, eyes darting around for cameras.

“I got his hair,” Meg tells Anna as they walk to the room. “I know it was supposed to go to you, but I thought I’d keep it until you were a bit more stable.”

“You’re more stable than me?” Anna asks.

Meg nods. “I’m upset, but not destroyed. He’s in a better place now. One day I will be, too, and we’ll all be together.”

“He said almost the same thing, before he died.”

“He would,” Meg says.

When they enter the room, it takes every ounce of Anna’s willpower not to run back out again. Lucifer’s sisters barely glance down at him in the coffin before they go to sit, avoiding the section up front reserved for family. Neither of them kneel and pray. Gabriel does, though, and runs a gentle hand over his brother’s forehead before he goes to sit.

Balthazar goes next, and then Meg. Anna watches the girl pray silently before she takes the rosary beads and slips them into Lucifer’s folded hands.

Anna approaches last. Kneeling, she makes the sign of the cross and bows her head. He looks peaceful in his coffin and entirely unlike himself without his hair. She tries to pray, but nothing comes to mind. Instead, she reaches into her purse and fishes out what she’s brought. Inside of his coffin, she places the picture she drew him of Claudandus, a marker the color of blood, his favorite color, and a small picture of herself. When she takes a closer look, she can see that Gabriel has placed a family portrait in as well, and that Meg has left a picture of she and Tom and Lucifer. In it, the three of them are young and happy, eyes bright as they beam at the camera, Lucifer’s arm around Meg’s shoulders.   

Anna reaches out and gently lays her hand over his cold, still one. She holds it there for a moment, and joins Meg in the family section up front with Gabriel and Balthazar.

Less than five minutes later, the doors open again and three women stroll in, their arms linked and their eyes puffy and gray lined.

“Ruby, Lilith, and Casey,” Meg whispers. “The most devoted of his lot.”

One of the women, Casey, has black hair that falls down to cover her breasts and a soft, round face. She is easily the calmest of the three, and simply kneels and prays before the coffin for a moment before she comes to give Meg and quick hug and sit behind her. The second one, Ruby, begins to cry at the sight of Lucifer’s body until Lilith, who has hair so light gray it is almost white, squeezes her arm for support.

Lilith has a smile on her face when she sits behind Anna, and Anna feels and instinctive urge to get away from her, even when Lilith grabs her hand.

“You must be Anna,” the woman purrs. “Don’t fret, dear. His time is done, but he died doing the Lord’s work. He will be rewarded.”

Anna hears a snort from far behind her, probably Hannah or Hael. She does not turn to look, but pats Lilith’s hand in what she hopes is a way that says _thank you, but please let go of me._

They sit in silence, for the most part. Anna presses close to Meg as they both stare miserably up at Lucifer’s body. Someone, probably Balthazar, has obtained a suit for him to be dressed in, and Anna thinks that it is odd to see him in something other than his prison uniform. There are no flowers in the room, not even from his followers, and Anna hadn’t thought to get them.

“Shouldn’t there be flowers?” she whispers to Meg.

Meg shakes her head. “No. He didn’t want any. Besides, we didn’t have a lot of money left over for flowers.”

“We got him the best coffin, though,” Ruby chimes in from behind them. “Solid bronze and copper. And his headstone is really nice, too. It’s already there, since we had so much time to prepare.”

“Copper’s kind of red, you know,” Anna says. She feels silly when she does, and reaches to touch her hair. Red, like blood. Red, like the sunset. Red, like her hair. Lucifer’s favorite color. His coffin, to someone who can see it, is the rusty color of old blood, and she thinks that it would please him. “Red was his favorite color.”

“I still think we should’ve at least picked some flowers up from the drugstore, or something,” Casey argues. “It just doesn’t seem right.”

“He doesn’t care about flowers anymore,” Meg tells them. “Hush.”

Casey begins to pray in a low whisper behind them. Unable to listen, Anna rises and goes to once again kneel beside the casket. The interior is a pale, snowy white. Anna is thankful that his eyes are closed. She couldn’t bear to look into his once beautiful blue eyes and see only solid, glassy gray.

She spends the next fifteen minutes with her hand over his. They were only able to touch once in life, a quick, second long brush of hands and clench of fingers, so she takes all the time she can to touch him now. Eventually, Meg comes to whisper in her ear.

“The priest is here,” she says. “It’s time to sit down. We’ll pray, and then say our final goodbyes and head to the cemetery.”

Anna nods and meekly follows Meg back to her seat. She is thankful when she sees that the priest is an older man, skilled at masking his emotions. He seems uncomfortable at first when he speaks, as if he knows that there is no helping Lucifer’s soul, but he continues, anyway. This funeral is for their benefit, after all, for their grief and spiritual healing, and he will not deny them that. Eventually, the priest asks them all to bow their head in prayer.

 _“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name,”_ Anna begins. But she finds that she cannot finish. There is no salvation for Lucifer, not in her mind. His crimes are beyond redemption, beyond hope. Eventually, only Meg and Lucifer’s girls speak. The priest does not seem to notice, or maybe he does not care. Instead, he clears his throat and asks if anyone wants to say a few words about the deceased. Anna can feel Lilith rising behind her, but turns to see her being pulled back into her seat by Ruby, who rapidly shakes her head.

“Alright, then,” the priest says. “If everyone would rise and, starting from the back, come forward to make their final goodbyes, and then go to your cars, we will head for the cemetery.”

Hannah and Hael are the first to rise. Both of them pause at the coffin together for a moment, and for the first time that day Anna sees tears welling in their eyes. But they are gone in a moment and the girls are out the door, walking into the frigid air. Lucifer’s girls go next, each one stopping briefly to say goodbye and touch their hands to his forehead. After that comes Gabriel, who stands there for almost a full minute without speaking. When he does, he says his final goodbye so quietly that Anna cannot hear.

“Let’s go,” Balthazar says.

The three of them rise and approach the coffin together. Balthazar pats his friend’s hand. “Rest easy, old friend. It’s done now.”

“We should stay,” Meg mutters. “Make sure he’s locked up right.”

Anna nods as Meg leans down and presses a gentle kiss to Lucifer’s cheek. She does not speak, but stands aside so Anna can say her final goodbyes. Trembling, with tears welling in her eyes and threatening to spill over, Anna leans down and lightly presses a kiss to Lucifer’s forehead. His flesh is cold and feels like clay, and she can taste powder on her lips from the makeup.

She goes to join Meg as even Balthazar files out, leaving them alone. An employee comes in and asks if they would like to stay while they close the casket. When the man offers to let one of them lock it, Anna steps forward. She remembers her father telling her that a family member should always stay to make sure the person is locked up tight, and locked up right.

“I’ll do it,” she says.

The man gently instructs her as she goes, handing her the Allen key. She feels strangely calm as she turns it. Then there is a soft click, and Lucifer’s body is sealed away forever, tucked safe and sound in a hard, metal box, where he cannot be hurt and cannot hurt anyone else ever again. 

“Almost done,” Meg says softly. “Come on. We’ll walk him out.”

They wait until the other employees come in to carry the coffin out. _This is supposed to be a man’s job_ , Anna thinks, _brothers and sons and uncles_. But they are all Lucifer has. They exit the funeral home on either side of his coffin, stopping at the sidewalk to watch as he is loaded into the hearse.

“Keep your hazards on,” Meg reminds her, departing for her own car. Anna nods and is relieved to see Castiel already behind the driver’s seat, a half-full cup of coffee in his hands, a funeral sticker already in his windshield.

Anna manages not to cry until they reach the cemetery and one of the employees hands her a rose to place on top of the coffin. Sapped of color, the flower looks sad and dead.

Castiel fidgets nervously beside her as they pray, but unlike her, he manages to get the entire prayer out, even though he didn’t know Lucifer at all. Meg walks away from Balthazar to stand next to Anna as they line up to place the roses on the casket, but Anna sees her stop as she catches Castiel’s gaze.

Both pairs of faces soften, both pairs of eyes light up, and both bodies sway slightly. She hears Castiel let out a gentle breath beside her, and Anna’s heart sinks into her boots.

“Anna,” he whispers. “Anna, what…what color did you say the sky was?”

“Blue,” she supplies. Then she finally begins to cry. She steps away from Castiel, leaves him to meet his soulmate and bask in the awe of a world filled with color as she approaches the coffin and lays her rose on top of the others. Hannah and Hael and Gabriel are already gone. She is the last.

“Are you ready to go?” Balthazar asks. Anna nods and turns to leave with him. She catches her brother’s eyes and points to Balthazar’s car. Castiel only nods and begins to steer Meg toward his own. Anna does not bother to say goodbye to either of them. She cannot watch them together, cannot bear to see the looks on their faces, and she cannot stay. She cannot stay and watch them fall in love with each other and the new colors that are now visible to them, not so soon after she has lost that very thing herself.

She and Balthazar sit in his car without speaking until the coffin is lowered into the ground, and the dirt lowered on top of it. The moment that Lucifer is well and truly buried, Anna feels a weight lift from her chest, one that was placed there six long months ago when she walked into that small room and looked into the eyes of a condemned killer and found them clear and blue and beautiful.

“Let’s go,” Anna says. “It’s done.”

Balthazar starts the car. If Anna squints, she can just see the headstone in the faint light. She tries to memorize the location, so she can maybe come back and visit him when she is strong enough to return the US. In this quiet corner of the cemetery, her soulmate is surrounded by older, rarely-visited graves, all of his neighbors having died at least fifty years prior, in order to minimize the chance of someone finding him and vandalizing his resting place.

Balthazar pulls the car away and rests his hand over hers. Anna squeezes his hand back and trains her eyes on the long, gray road ahead of her.


	2. Art

Wonderful art for this fic done by the amazingly talented msdoomandgloom over on tumblr.

**Author's Note:**

> -This fic is not meant to be a statement either for or against the death penalty, and does not reflect my views on it in any way.  
> -All inaccuracies about the prison system are entirely my own.  
> -In reality there is one way glass in the execution room, so the condemned cannot see the people in the viewing room, while the people in the viewing room can see the condemned. However, I felt like two way glass worked better for the purposes of this story.  
> -The description of death by electric chair, as well as witnessing executions, were taken from various sources online.  
> -Each state has its own policies and methods of executions and each prison that performs them have different viewing room policies. The location was deliberately left ambiguous and probably matches no one facility or state protocol. But, being set in a fictional universe, I felt I could take liberties.  
> -Lucifer’s casket is based on a Star Legacy Supreme casket, bronze color. In reality, it is brown, and not actually very red. However, at this point, Anna would not know that.


End file.
